30 Scoops in 30 Days: Delicieuse (Day 15)

Delicieuse is plastered with charts and signs extolling the virtues of goat's milk, but we don't seek out ice cream for its curative powers. Nor do we trek to Redondo Beach for Delicieuse's goat's milk ice cream. We come for the incredible sorbets.

Goat's milk ice cream is what Delicieuse is best known for, but they comprised only a few of the store's dozen available flavors, and they were the least interesting ones. If you want gelato so goaty "you can almost imagine [it] nibbling on your sleeves," Bulgarini in Altadena remains unrivaled. Here, the caprine ice cream is so mild, it's barely distinguishable from the bovine ice cream. It's not bad. Not by any means. Everything Delicieuse does, they do with care and formidable attention to detail.

Nowhere is this clearer than in their fruit sorbets, a wallop of scent, flavor and freshness. The strawberry basil is exquisitely balanced on all counts, and makes us itch to try the apricot rosemary. Their Pear William (presumably made with Williams pears) is the best pear sorbet we've tried since Gelato Bar. And the Berry Michelle, a mix of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, may be the best berry sorbet we've ever tasted.

The ice cream is also pretty good. Actually, it's terrific. The chocolate is dark and bitter, the coconut, creamy and supple, and the lavender goat's milk, which could have easily tasted like a potpourri sachet, has just enough of the herb to earn its name, Summer in Provence. The most intriguing ice cream we tried was rice. It takes a moment for the nuttiness of the rice to hit the back of your palate, but when it does, it fulfills every secret we've had about combining rice pudding and ice cream.

Deliceuse's skill is both deep and broad. 12 flavors are available in the shop at any time, but the repertoire includes such intriguing flavors as avocado sorbet, pear and chocolate sorbet and maple sugar goat's milk as well as "regular" ice cream in cognac, banana flambee, white peach, Earl Grey, saffron and fig.

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Where Manhattan Beach Creamery is pleasant local shop for local people, Delicieuse makes ice cream, whatever its provenance, that's so outstanding it's worth a brutal drive down the 405. How many ice cream shops can say that?